Belarus
Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a country in Eastern Europe. History Birth of Zhores Alferov Vitebsk was the birthplace of , who grew up to become a renowned scientist, father of heterostructure transistors, and Nobel Prize winner. Jemma Simmons was excited to be near Vitebsk when she traveled to Zloda in Belarus, having dreamed of visiting the area since she was a schoolgirl as she idolized Alferov.Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: 1.04: Eye-Spy Training Child Assassins In 1937, the girl who would assume the identity of Dottie Underwood was one of the many girls that lived and were trained as elite spies and assassins in the Red Room Academy. Every morning, one of her instructors entered the room and opened the handcuffs that tied each girl to her bed. One of those mornings, Underwood shared a piece of bread she managed to hide with one of her friends, Anya. The girls were taken to a room modeled after a typical American classroom, where the girls were indoctrinated and brainwashed through films they were forced to watch and learn by heart. The films, such as served a double purpose, as they showed the behavior a woman should show to not raise any suspicions, and also, through subliminal messages embedded in the movies, they brainwashed the girls. One day, Underwood and Anya had to fight each other as part of their training under the watch of her instructor. Though it looked like an even match at first, Underwood managed to overpower Anya and grabbed her by the neck. With a gesture, her instructor ordered Underwood to kill her friend, and she subsequently broke her neck.Agent Carter: 1.05: The Iron Ceiling Entrance to the Soviet Union The Howling Commandos acted as a tactical team for a Strategic Scientific Reserve team led by Jack Thompson that included Peggy Carter. Thompson tried to cross the Soviet border from Poland, but Dum Dum Dugan, knowing the terrain much better than him, proposed to head to Lithuania and cross the border through the city of Ashmyany in Belarus. Dugan showed Thompson a pair of trucks they would use to travel through Lithuania and Belarus, and boarded one of them with Carter to talk to her friend while crossing the countries. Stories Around the Fire Peggy Carter, her Strategic Scientific Reserve team and the Howling Commandos camped in Belarus after crossing the Soviet border, so he spent a time laughing with her friends around a fire. Jack Thompson and Junior Juniper returned from their watch, stating that Mike Li and Rick Ramirez were going to do the night watch, so they would depart by dawn. Carter asked Juniper if he saw an abominable snowman like the one in Tibet, and Juniper stated that he never said he saw an "abominable snowman". Pinky Pinkerton explained that Juniper specified he saw a "yeti", though Dum Dum Dugan laughed saying that it was hard to understand Juniper while he was sobbing. Thompson asked the difference between a yeti and an abominable snowman, and Juniper said that one was real and the other was not, making the rest laugh. Carter asked Thompson if they had mermaids in Japan, as he had been destined there during World War II. The Commandos wanted Thompson to share one of his stories, and he aid that the he did a lot of ground work and especially he dug a lot of trenches. Carter then pointed that he surely did not receive the Navy Cross for digging trenches. Thompson remained thoughtful about the Navy Cross, and shared a story about how he discovered six Japanese soldiers while he fell asleep on the night shift, and one of them would have killed his commanding officer, so he shot the six soldiers in the back before they knew they were there. Visibly disturbed for the memory, Thompson said that he preferred Juniper's story about the Yeti, and drank a sip of Dugan's bourbon. Infiltration into the Red Room Academy Preparation Peggy Carter, her Strategic Scientific Reserve team and the Howling Commandos arrived to the outskirts of the Red Room Academy, the place where, according the coded message sent by Leviathan, an exchange between them and Howard Stark would take place. Jack Thompson examined the place before entering and determined that Leviathan probably had not arrived yet, and ordered to infiltrate the facility in four teams of two, meeting on the ground floor in 30. Happy Sam Sawyer sought Carter's approval of the plan, and she explained that Thompson was leading the operation. Thompson told Carter to voice her plan, and she explained that using two teams of four instead of four teams of two would be safer, secretly knowing the message was just a bait for them. She explained the need of discretion as they did not know what to expect inside the facility. Thompson agreed with her plan, and divided them into two groups, one led by Carter and composed of Dum Dum Dugan, Junior Juniper and Mike Li, and the other one led by Thompson and composed of Happy Sam Sawyer, Pinky Pinkerton and Rick Ramirez. The two teams then infiltrated the academy to investigate the presence of Stark or Leviathan. Boarding School Peggy Carter, Dum Dum Dugan, Junior Juniper and Mike Li infiltrated together the Red Room Academy, and they examined a room modeled after a typical American classroom that made them all feel uneasy. Li unintentionally activated a projector, and while Dugan told him to shut it off, Carter realized there was something hidden in the images. Carter started to slowly examine the projected movie frame by frame, and found a subliminal messages embedded in it, with the words "Instill Fear" written in Russian. Li then heard a child crying, and wondered what was a little kid doing in that place. Carter grabbed her weapon, and told them to be careful, feeling it could be a trap. The team entered a room filled with children beds, and Carter realized the facility was a boarding school. Juniper wondered why there were handcuffs on each bed, and Dugan simply answered it was Russia, before noticing a little girl crying in a corner of the room. Dugan approached the girl, Eva, and told her they were there to help and they would not hurt her. Eva stopped crying and slowly touched Dugan's bowler hat, nodding when he asked her if she liked the hat. Dugan asked Carter the reason they were called "bowler hats", and Eva seized the opportunity to quickly stab Dugan, take his gun and shoot at Juniper. Carter managed to disarm Eva, but she was too fast and was able to escape, while Juniper died on the ground. Dugan, who managed to survive despite being stabbed, grabbed a hand grenade and attempted to throw it through the hole that Eva used to escape, but Carter stopped him from killing a little girl. Carter asked Dugan if he was all right, and explained that his Bulletproof Vest took the brunt of the stabbing, saving his life. The second team, composed of Jack Thompson, Happy Sam Sawyer, Pinky Pinkerton and Rick Ramirez arrived to the room, and Thompson asked what had happened. Carter revealed that Leviathan would have almost certainly been alerted of their presence, so they needed to move quickly. Dugan took Juniper's dog tags, and breathed heavily until he managed to overcome the death of his friend for the time being. Dugan told Carter they needed an exit on the back of the facility, who acknowledged that they needed to find the ones who were trying to frame Howard Stark. Carter ordered Dugan, Pinkerton and Ramirez to find a back way out of the facility, and the rest to come with her to further investigate the bottom levels. Prisoners of Leviathan Happy Sam Sawyer killed a Leviathan soldier standing guard in a hallway, and Jack Thompson ordered him to stay at that position to alert them of any other soldier that could appear. Thompson approached a prison cell where two prisoners were being kept, and one of them, with a heavy Russian accent, realized that they were not Leviathan. Peggy Carter told him they were the "good guys", and asked them why Leviathan was holding them as prisoners. Doctor Ivchenko explained that Leviathan acquired a set of blueprints in the black market, and they wanted his cellmate, Nikola, to build it for them, as Nikola was an engineer and Ivchenko was his psychiatrist. Ivchenko explained that Nikola was burdened with a gift that allowed him to see things in multiple dimensions. He exemplified the gift saying that Nikola was able to see the biology and phytochemistry when looking at a simple field of grass. Ivchenko explained that in order to keep Nikola's gift from overwhelming him, he required discipline and stability, and since Leviathan took his family, and Nikola's stability with them, he provided Nikola with the discipline he needs. Carter asked about the weapon Leviathan wanted them to construct, and Nikola explained that it was a Photonic Amplifier. He asked Carter if she knew that light was composed of both particles and waves, something she already knew, so Nikola explained that Howard Stark had found a way of altering the behavior of the waves, showing them the blueprints with the symbol of Stark Industries. Carter asked if Stark was there in the facility, and Nikola got angry, saying that Leviathan stole the blueprints, if Stark was there, they would not need him and he could be in Kiev with his wife. Ivchenko calmed Nikola, and asked Carter if they had entered the facility hoping to find Stark. Ivchenko also revealed he had heard no mention of Stark himself from Leviathan. Sawyer shouted that Leviathan soldiers were coming, and Nikola begged Carter to liberate them. She told Nikola and Ivchenko to get away from the door, and she shot to its lock, breaking it and liberating the two prisoners. Final Shooting Peggy Carter, Jack Thompson, Happy Sam Sawyer and Mike Li retreated to the Boiler Room with the two prisoners they had recently liberated, Nikola and Doctor Ivchenko, to defend themselves from a squad of Leviathan soldiers that were attacking them. Carter contacted Dum Dum Dugan to tell him they were trapped in the boiler room and needed an exit. The soldiers continued to attack them, and while the agents managed to kill some of them, they were clearly outnumbered. Carter asked Nikola and Ivchenko to show them the way out of the facility in case they knew it. Eva appeared from inside a pipe and killed Li with a shot to the head, and while Sawyer retaliated, Eva managed to shoot him in the leg, escaping from the gunfire. Nikola, claiming he knew what to do, took Sawyer as his hostage, and told the soldiers to hold their fire, as if they let Ivchenko and himself escape, he would handle the Americans. Carter tried to persuade Nikola, saying they would not be leverage and would die before being captured. Thompson was paralyzed by fear and unable to move, and Ivchenko tried to calm Nikola down while grabbing a weapon. Nikola was tired of being a prisoner and did not want to hear Ivchenko, so Carter threatened to kill him in case he killed Sawyer. Before he could react, Ivchenko killed Nikola, apologizing in tears for having to do it. A large number of soldiers arrived, so Carter contacted Dugan again to make him hurry with the exit. Sawyer ran out of ammunition, and as Carter told Thompson to take Li's ammunition, she realized that Thompson was paralyzed in fear. Carter handed Sawyer her gun to let him continue shooting, and she tried to make Thompson react, to no avail. Dugan blasted a hole in the wall and entered the room with Pinky Pinkerton and Rick Ramirez, shouting his war cry, "Wah-hoo", though Carter told him to stop "wah-hooing" and help them. Pinkerton and Ramirez started shooting at the soldiers, and Carter ordered everybody to get out. Thompson was still paralyzed by fear, so Carter went to his position and made him regain his senses while Dugan covered her. Dugan told Carter to leave, but she insisted in being the last one on leaving the facility. Dugan asked her what would Captain America say if he left Carter behind, and she answered that he would tell him to do as Carter said. Dugan left and Carter shot a final wave of bullets to buy some time for her to escape. She ran to the truck that was waiting outside, covered by Pinkerton and Dugan, and she managed to jump it and avoid the enemy fire. Ivchenko, surprised by her performance, told Carter that it had not been bad for a girl, and she jokingly answered that she hated them all. Proximity Card Purchase Akela Amador flew into Belarus and bought a train ticket to Zloda following her theft of a shipment of diamonds in Stockholm, Sweden. In a hotel, Amador met with Kropsky, in order to hand him the diamonds she stole in Milan, Monte Carlo and Stockholm. Kropsky appeared in the building with two bodyguards despite they agreed to come alone, but Amador found out and attacked him. Kropsky, visibly scared, revealed that the guards were only to protect him when he left, so Amador showed him the diamonds concealed inside golf balls to pass them through customs. Kropsky handed hr a proximity card to enter the Todorov Building in return for the diamonds, surprised that someone accepted his price of 30 million dollars. Amador threatened Kropsky that she would find him if the card failed, but Kropsky assured her it would access all levels as promised, before asking if she had a plan to proceed inside the building. Search for Akela Amador Phil Coulson and his team arrived in Zloda searching for Akela Amador, using a rented van to conceal themselves. Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons discussed her excitement to be in Belarus, birthplace of , although Fitz was more worried about his previous experience on the field in Peru, where they were attacked by a group of local rebels. Coulson assured Fitz that he would stay inside the van with Simmons and Skye to perform an electronic search for Amador, as she would need to contact her buyer; they were tasked with scanning for cellphone transmissions, encrypted e-mails, anomalous broadcast signatures or similar things. Coulson and Grant Ward headed into town to search for Amador, with Ward trying to comfort Coulson over the seeming betrayal of one of his protegées; Coulson was reluctant to admit that Amador was a traitor without knowing all the facts. The two agents found an Innkeeper who knew Amadaor, and spoke of her as an angel that had a gift to know things, as she was able to know that the Innkeeper had a tumor, and advised her to visit a doctor to be operated. The innkeeper also revealed that, with her gift, Amador would surely know that they were coming, and she had probably left. Meanwhile, Skye, Fitz and Simmons were able to connect to a local server and discovered an encrypted broadcast. The broadcast showed their own van in a live feed, sometimes with an X-ray visual of the inside. At that moment, Amador attacked their van with a truck, ramming the Short Bus until it overturned, and leaving the city afterwards. Capture of Akela Amador Akela Amador moved to a hotel in Minsk after buying a key card for the Todorov Building using her stolen diamonds in Zloda. Phil Coulson and his team were able to hijack the broadcast from Amador's Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant, realizing that her eye was the camera when Amador started to fix it in front of a mirror inside the hotel, and that she was being controlled using the eye implant. Melinda May started the shifts to watch the feed and learn her location, seizing the opportunity to try to trap Amador alone when she looked at a receipt from the hotel. May entered the room and confronted Amador, offering her a chance of turning over and get a fair trial. Amador wanted to know if Coulson sent her, but May said that, as he felt sorry for Amador, she decided to come instead. Amador explained that her handler would recognize May as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and only one of them could survive, because if Amador did not kill May, she would be killed using the fail-safe of the eye implant. The two fought briefly, with Amador destroying the lamps in the room and use her eye implant. However, before she could shoot and kill May, Coulson arrived and shot Amador with a Night-Night Gun, rendering her unconscious. Infiltration into Todorov Building ]] Grant Ward traveled to the Todorov Building in order to fulfill Akela Amador's mission, mimicking her Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant using a pair of Backscatter Glasses designed by Leo Fitz, capable of sending and receiving the same signal feed as Amador's eye implant, and even having the same backscatter functions. Ward had to proceed with the mission in order to discover the handler's intentions and to buy enough time to disable the fail-safe in Amador's eye. Ward entered the building with Skye's remote assistance. Ward managed to pass all the security scans until approaching his target, the Delta 5 section inside the building, and was ordered to seduce a security guard, as the man who sent the orders thought Ward was Amador. Ward tried to be friendly to the guard, but seeing no other option to pass that security control, he was forced to knock the guard out. Ward entered a room where a group of men were studying a series of symbols of seemingly alien origin, that were the true target of the mission. Ward was wished good luck to abandon the building, as the guard had to put a password into the security system at regular intervals to avoid setting the alarm of the building. Ward ordered Skye to meet him at the south side of the building, and he fled from the security guards. He was contacted by Leo Fitz, who needed advice to deactivate Amador's kill switch, and Ward's expertise with bombs could prove handy. However, as Ward inadvertently looked into a mirror, he prompted Fitz to cut the eye before the kill switch could be activated. Ward escaped the building under gunfire, and met with Skye to return to the Bus. Trapping the Englishman Melinda May was able to determine the location of Akela Amador's handler in Minsk, using the messages he sent to track him down. Phil Coulson, to personally catch the handler, ordered May to keep him updated of the status of the search. During Grant Ward's infiltration in Todorov Building, the messages sent allowed May to lock the handler's precise location, but he also discovered Ward's ruse when he inadvertently looked into a mirror, forcing the handler to activate the kill switch, but, unbeknownst to him, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons were able to remove Amador's Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant before the activation, saving her. Coulson was able to recognize the handler due to the clues given by Amador, but as soon as Coulson identified himself as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, he was terminated by his own handler. Trivia *The official language of Belarus is Russian, not Belorussian. Therefore the signs seen in Eye-Spy cannot be considered "official". References External Links * Category:Locations Category:Countries Category:Avengers: Age of Ultron Locations Category:Black Widow (film) Locations Category:Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Locations Category:Agent Carter (TV series) Locations